MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. Food production should increase by one and a half times by 2050 to feed the world's population, Oleg Kobyakov, head of the Russian branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), announced.
"There are currently 8 billion people living on the planet. By 2050, there will be almost 10 billion," he said at a TASS press conference dedicated to World Wildlife Day.
"But in order to feed this number of people, to provide a complete diet, <...> we need to produce approximately 50-60% more food than is produced now," he said.
Kobyakov noted that in the meantime, "the production environment is shrinking," and "the productivity limits for the yield of basic agricultural crops, for milk yields in dairy farming, for egg production of hens" have been reached.
"Therefore, the task now is to produce more with less, to produce more efficiently," the head of the FAO office stressed. He pointed out that at the household level, this means reducing food loss and spoilage.
"And if we now reduce losses and spoilage by half, we will cope with hunger. So, think about whether you need to buy so much," Kobyakov concluded.